Monday, February 13, 2012

Devotion

Talking
about devotion, dogs come immediately to mind. I’d like to shift the attention
to cats though. People say they are arrogant, selfish, lonely and
unpredictable. When I am ill, my 4 year old cat who wants nothing but eat,
sleep and play, sits beside me and stays there for hours turning his routine
(and we know how much cats like routines) upside down. He doesn’t sleep. He
just stays there, on my bed, looking at me every now and then from the corner
of his eye wiggling his tail slowly, touching my leg with it on a regular tempo
of pacifying certainty. He just stays there. When I get up, he gets up and
follows me around the house. He doesn’t want food; he doesn’t want to go
outside; he doesn’t even want to play. I have tested it. He just follows me around
and sits wherever I sit. If I go back to bed, he jumps up and snuggles close to
my legs or hands looking at me. And he does this every single time I am ill. As
I recover, he resumes his normal life of getting up early, eating, going
outside, eating, running like crazy throughout the house up and down the
stairs, eating, sleeping, eating, playing, running, eating, sleeping his
afternoon nap, coming downstairs for dinner time when he sits on an empty chair
at the table and looks at the TV while the family has dinner, running a bit
more driving everyone nuts, eating and going to sleep (at least that is what we
think, we never know what he does during the night!). That is devotion.